


we rode on horses made of sticks

by tomato_greens



Series: Listen, Listen - music ficlets [7]
Category: Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody at Scrimmage's whispers that <i>Cathy and Diane are doing it</i>, but they're not; Diane likes boys, and Cathy likes reading about global political intrigue and the vibrator she bought last summer vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we rode on horses made of sticks

**Author's Note:**

> Written while listening to Nancy Sinatra's version of [Bang Bang](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Xl0Qry-hA) (my favorite version! I only just found out it was in Kill Bill, which I've never seen––a belated hurray).

Everybody at Scrimmage's whispers that _Cathy and Diane are doing it_ , but they're not; Diane likes boys, and Cathy likes reading about global political intrigue and the vibrator she bought last summer vacation. 

"Honestly, Bruno, how gauche of you to ask," Cathy sniffs, waving one hand to dry it––she's just painted her nails the brightest red she could find.

"Sorry," Bruno mutters, looking more embarrassed than chagrined. He scuffs his toe on the carpet and picks at his T-shirt.

"What is this about, anyway?" Diane asks from her corner, where she's carefully assembling a collage of phallus-shaped objects she's found in advertising for their new History & Media class. Cathy looks; so far there appears to be several types of vegetable and one curiously bulbous spatula. 

The average Canadian kitchen is so erotic, she thinks, and nearly misses it when Bruno colors further and mutters, "Nothing, just––maybe I'm going through a phase or something."

Diane abandons her scissors and stack of women's magazines to peer at him; Cathy decides the second coat can wait and puts the nail polish on her bedside table. "A phase?" Diane asks.

"Or something," Bruno adds.

"Phases rarely are," Cathy observes, then realizes, suddenly: "Oh. Is this about Boots?"

Bruno goes even redder, which Cathy would not have bet possible without an internal organ busting, and says, "No," but not quickly enough to be convincing.

"It is," Diane says wonderingly, then laughs––Cathy has clearly been a good influence. "What, did you finally realize what those gushy feelings were every time you looked at him?" 

Bruno doesn't say anything.

"That must be it," Cathy says to Diane when it's clear he's not going to rise to the bait in any satisfying way. "And possibly why when he woke up in the mornings his sheets kept feeling a little––shall we say––well-used––"

"Shut up," Bruno says, and his color has changed; now there are two red spots flying high on his cheeks, the rest of him looks pale and weirdly austere for someone as fundamentally goofy as he is, "shut up, look, it's not that, you've got it all wrong."

"So stop being such a coward and tell us how it is, then, Walton," Cathy drawls,

and Bruno looks straight up at her and says, "We're together; we have been, but we haven't told anybody, obviously; I think he's cheating on me,"

and Cathy reaches for her polish again, like armor or oxygen, and smiles her fiercest smile. "Well," she tells him, "we'll just see about that."


End file.
